Category: House

After my earlier success with repairing a lockset, I thought I’d fix a number of other locksets that were causing us issues. The first one, our back door, was starting to only open when the doorknob was turned in one direction. In the other, it didn’t work. It turned out that the single screw holding the cover of the lockset case on was loose. This allowed the mechanism inside to slip when the knob was turned one direction but not the other. Tightening this screw fixed things right up.

The second issue was with our basement door which has not worked at all since we moved in. I was hoping that a simple repair was in order. As you can see, that was not actually the case.

When I removed the lockset, I found it was actually in pieces. The damage had clearly happened long in the past as there was already a makeshift metal strap in place holding things together. There was no repairing it so it needed to be replaced.

Finding a Replacement Lockset

The best case scenario would be to simply substitute in a replacement lockset and have done with it. Unfortunately, for some reason, the lockset in this basement door is different than all the other ones in the house. As a result, I couldn’t use any of the other ones that I had on hand (bottom two in the image below). All were too large for the mortise or the location of the spindle would have required making an new hole in the door. This type of modification would have been very difficult to hide.

Luckily, my father had collected the locksets from my grandparents now abandoned farm house so I had some additional pieces to work with (top right in the above image). It turns out that they were small enough to fit the mortise in the door and had the spindle in the right location. On the down side, the face plate of the lockset is much smaller and thinner than the original.

As a result, I was forced to make some changes to the door mortise to accommodate this.

Resizing the Door Mortise

I started with the empty mortise.

First step is to inset a piece of wood to fill the cover of the mortise. I used some salvaged antique pine that I had in my breaker pile.

Once the glue had dried, I trimmed the patch flush with the original door. I followed this by cutting out an opening to fit the new, smaller lockset.

You may be able to see some additional new wood along the bottom of the mortise. Since the new lockset was smaller, I glued in a strip of wood to take up the vertical play in the mortise.

Next was to mark out the location of the new lockset face plate for the inset.

And use a chisel to create the recess for the new plate.

I know that some of the break out looks bad here but it now fits the new lockset very nicely.

All that is left is to use shellac with various dyes and earth pigments to make the patch look like it was part of the original door.

With the lockset back in place, you can hardly tell that it is a replacement other than that it works.

Repairing the Strike Plate

I figured since I was doing the door mortise, I should likely do the strike plate are as well. As you can see, the strike plate had been moved around quite a bit over its life. As a result, the wood was pretty messed up.

To get started, I needed to square up the cavity so that I could fit in a wooden patch.

As there are two levels of cavity, I had to glue in two different patches to fill the space. As with the door mortise, I used antique pine from my breaker pile. First was the deeper cavity – I glued in a patch and then trimmed it flush. I also enlarged the repair area upwards. This is to fix the damage visible near the top of the above image.

I then glued in a second larger thinner patch to fill the remaining space.

Once the glue had dried, I trimmed the patch flush with the original wood and formed the front edge to match the existing edge.

Next was to mark out the position of the strike plate and form a mortise to fit it. I measured for the screw locations and pre-drilled them.

Making the New look like the Old

At this point the wood was ready to put the strike plate back in place but the new wood was painfully obvious. Using a combination of shellac, dyes, and earth pigment to make the new patch blend into the existing door frame. The idea is not to make things perfect but rather to make it look like it has been used and abused for the last 130 years as is the case with the remainder of the door frame.

Finally, I put the original strike plate back in place. I think I was pretty successful. Amelia was unable to tell where the patch began and ended. Undetectable other than the fact that the door now works properly.

My “Painting” Supplies

I mentioned earlier that I use a combination of shellac, dyes, and earth pigments to recreate the finish and patina of the original components. Here is the setup that I use in doing that work.

The shellac is in the baby food bottle. I pour a bit out onto a plastic plate which I then color to the needed tone. The dyes are in dropper bottles that I can use, as needed, to adjust the base color. I then add in powdered earth pigments to adjust things and provide some opacity that the dye doesn’t allow.

Shellac works well for this because it dries so quickly. This allows me to build up layers of color, making small adjustments until it matches the original color. It is much more an art than a science and something that I find I truly enjoy, particularly when I manage to get the color “just right”

Given our house is 130 year old, it is not unexpected that some things are going to start wearing out. This is particularly true of mechanical components that get regular use such as locksets. The continued used eventually causes things like springs to fail due to metal fatigue. This entry discusses repairing an antique lockset return spring. I know this isn’t strictly a woodworking project but certainly peripherally related to restoration so I’ll include it in the category.

The lockset on the door leading from our kitchen to our mudroom began to fail to remain closed. The bolt was no longer extending automatically after the doorknob was turned,

As a result, it would no longer engage with the strike plate and the door would just swing open.

Diagnosing the Problem

Removing the lockset for repair requires removing one of the doorknobs and sliding the spindle out of the lockset. Then only two screws need to be removed from the face of the lockset and it slides right out.

Once you have the lockset out, there is a single screw that holds the side cover on.

Removing the cover lets you see the interior of the lockset.

If you are wondering what the white is, it is lithium grease. My first thought was that the mechanism simply needed lubrication but this was not the case. The actual problem was that the spring that returned the bolt to its extended position had failed. You can see the spring, a thin strip of spring steel, in both the relaxed and tension state at the bottom of case in the following images.

Repairing the Spring

Now here is the problem, how do you find a replacement spring for a 130 year old lockset. I’m sure that somewhere on the interwebs you could find someone that sells replacements. I’m cheap and impatient, however, so I went looking for something I had on hand instead. It turns out that an old hacksaw blade is the same thickness and spring as the original piece.

A quick trip to the grinder and I have a replacement piece for the lockset.

I then slip this into place in the lockset case and close it back up.

With the new spring in place, the lockset was back in working order. I expect that we can get another 130 years of use out of it now.

In the first part of this blog post, I covered the prep of the wood and cutting the rabbets and dados for the medicine cabinet build. This part will cover the adjustable storage shelves, assembly and installation.

Drilling Shelf Support Holes

To make the space a usable as possible, I wanted to have adjustable shelves in the medicine cabinet. I considered a number of different mechanisms for this but, in the end, settled on using holes and brass pin supports. Making the holes for the support pins is pretty straight forward. The old trick of using peg board as a template works great.

Clamp it in place and start drilling with a 1/4″ bit. I can buy bags of the shelf pins from Lee Valley that are inexpensive and work well. For me, the holes in the peg board are actually too close together and so I only use every second one. Because the backside of the case will not be visible, I was able to just drill through. If the back of your project is exposed and you are worried about breaking through, consider some sort of depth indicator for your drill bit.

Cutting the Shelves to Length

Making the shelves should be a straight forward as cutting to length and painting but, in reality, it was not so simple. One thing I neglected to mention earlier is that the closet opening that I am working to is not square.

This isn’t in any way unusual – just one of the everyday challenges that go with a century home. Most owners, including myself, prefer to call it character. In any case, the intention of the build was to make it look like it had always been there as part of the original house. As a result, I was forced to build the case out of square with the top being about 3/8″ wider than the bottom. As a consequence, to avoid having gaps at their ends, the shelves had to decrease in length from top to bottom.

Here are all the shelves laid out, before and after, for priming on my work bench.

After priming I marked the back of each shelf with Roman numerals from top to bottom. This ensured that I would be able to keep the shelves in the right order when they were installed.

Roman numerals were designed to allow a straight chisel to cut them so they are easy to execute. I also used the tang end of a triangular file to imprint an indicator of which side was up on each shelf. Not very pretty but are on the back which will not be visible when installed.

I gave them a couple coats of paint to finish them off.

Assembling the Case

With all the pieces ready, it was time to assemble the case. The case fit into the opening with a nice firm pressure fit. As I mentioned, the closet opening was not square. I first assembled the sides and shelves with nails and glue and pressed it into place while wet. I left the back off, however, to allow it to conform to the shape of the opening. The resulting frame was distorted exactly out of square in the same way that the opening was. Once removed from the opening, I fitted a piece of 1/4″ plywood into the rabbets at the back, taking into account adjustment for out of square.

I realized at this point that I had neglected to address the gap below the bottom shelf. A quick trip to the discards pile produced a piece of painted pine suitable for the job as a toe kick.

The whole thing then slide back in place with hardly a gap between the cabinet and the door stop of the closet opening.

Despite the slight out of square condition, the joints still looked pretty good.

Painting

Getting near the finish line, I just had to paint the case. A quick coat of primer followed by a couple finish coats did the trick. At this point, it looked pretty much like it had always been there. The only real give away was how clean and fresh the new paint looks – time will take care of that.

I should mention one of the minor, but painful hiccups in the process. As you can probably imagine, the multiple layers of paint affect the diameter of the shelf support holes. It was then impossible to insert any of the support pins into them. The back row of holes was also quite close to the back of the cabinet. This made it impossible to use a power drill to re-drill. I reamed out the holes using my hands and a 1/4″ bit. There are a lot of holes and drill bits have sharp edges. It is something I’ll have to rethink if I do this again. Perhaps paint the side panels ahead of time so I can ream them with a drill instead?

In the end, all is good and we’ve created usable storage space where none existed before.

Older homes like ours (built in 1886) often present challenges around storage space as they often do not have the type or volume of storage space that are common in modern builds. Sometimes, even when space seems available, it can be an illusion. Take, for instance, one of the closets on our second floor in between the master bedroom and the girls room.

Looks great – access to storage just outside the door to two of the bedrooms! Unfortunately, when you open it up, you realize things aren’t quite what they seem.

It turns out that the space behind this door is only, at best, minimally useful. A previous owner had built a closet into the girls room by utilizing this space so it is not a complete loss from a storage point of view. The raw cedar that you can see in the pictures is the outside of the closet box from their room that cannibalizes the space from the original closet.

So, what to do? With only about 5 inches to play with from the surface of the cedar box to the front of the closet door stop, there weren’t a lot of options. Still, rather than write it off, I decided to utilize the space to make a large medicine cabinet. The shallow depth becomes a benefit as it makes it easy to see what is what when there are a lot of small bottles and boxes being stored there.

Prepping Stock

The first step was to prep some lumber for the job. I have a lot of pine boards laying around as the result of some significant work that I had to do in replacing balcony decking that the previous owner had installed inappropriately. I’m a huge fan of using reclaimed lumber so, rather than throw stuff out during demolition, I hang onto anything that may be useful.

While their condition certainly made it challenging to re-use them for anything stain grade, they were a fine option for the medicine cabinet, which would be painted. After a couple of hours of jointing, planing, and cutting to size, I had the stock ready to go.

If you wondering about the clamps, when I know that I won’t be assembling things right away, I like to clamp the stock to limit any warping. I’m not sure that it actually makes a difference but, in my mind at least, I feel better about it. To round things out, I did need to pick up a sheet of 1/4″ plywood at the box store. Again, no need for anything fancy as it would ultimately be painted.

Cutting Rabbets

The structure of the case is pretty simple. The top sits on rabbets with midpoint and bottom shelves sitting in dadoes in the side panels. The back would then fit into a 1/4″ rabbet cut into the back of the sides and top.

I start with cutting the sides to length.

A Tale of Two Rabbet Planes

The next step was to clamp the sides down and run the rabbet into their back edge. To do this, I pulled out my handy dandy Stanley 78. This is a straight blade rabbeting plane that just works. Worker examples like mine can be had for not much money from antique dealers or ebay. You can read more about them on Patrick Leach’s excellent website.

So it would seem that I have my game together – using reclaimed wood and reconditioned Stanley planes to keep costs down. However, I’ve not always been this conscientious and, in my past, have fallen prey to the siren song of the new, shinier offerings in this space. As a result, I also have a left and right pair of the excellent, though not cheap, Veritas skewed rabbet planes. With the 78 around, they have actually seen almost no use since I got them. However, running long rabbets in pine seemed like a perfect time to pull them out and get them into service.

As I said earlier, the Stanley 78 just works – full stop. The Veritas planes also just work, but even better than the 78, which is very high praise coming from me. Part of it is the better two post fence mechanism that keeps the plane square to the cut and part of it is the skew blade that pulls the plane into the fence as you cut. Of course, because we are talking about skew blades, this temporary infatuation will evaporate come sharpening time. The straight blade on the 78 is dead easy to put an edge on and not too fussy about being exactly square – I doubt it will be as painless with the Veritas.

Cutting Rabbets With the Grain

With the positive feeling still firmly in place, I started cutting my rabbets. The skew angle of the blade results in the most lovely spiral shavings that run the length of the board.

For those of you who are reading all this and thinking “why didn’t I just run the rabbet on my router table?”, you have clearly not used a good rabbet plane before. Setup takes only moments and with only a subtle noise, similar to the tearing of paper (no earplugs needed), the job is done. In the end, you have a perfect rabbet and only a pile of springy shavings to collect. No dust, no fuss, all good. The sense of satisfaction is palatable.

Cutting Rabbets Across the Grain

Cutting rabbets with the grain was so much fun, I thought I’d keep it up with the cross grain rabbet for the top. Turns out that while this works, it is not nearly as neat and clean. You need to use the nicker to sever the fibers as you are forming the rabbet. On hardwood, this works pretty well. Unfortunately, likely due to my particular technique, there seems to be just enough spring in softwood to make this not work nearly as well in pine.

With pine I find myself constantly re-cutting the cross grain edge by hand and so alternate between plane and knife (or chisel), which just slows things down. Hind site is 20/20. I should have done the cross grain rabbet with a saw and router plane as I did with the dadoes below.

Cutting the Dadoes

I like cutting dadoes. Not sure why but there is something satisfying in the outcome. Not sure my technique is the best but it work for me so here goes. First step is to cut the edges of the dado with my marking knife. I do this directly from the piece that will be fitted to the dado, the shelf in this case.

Next is to cut just inside the knife lines to depth with my giant back saw.

For those of you wondering why the back saw is so long, it is from a vintage Stanley miter box. Initially I found it hard to keep the saw square. I’ve got that in hand now and find the length of stroke I can take really speeds things up. It also makes judging the registration of the blade to the intended cut easier.

The next step is to hog the waste out with a sharp paring chisel.

Finally, I clean the dado up to finished depth using a router plane.

I use the Veritas version of the router plane. The vintage Stanley 71s work without question, but the depth adjustment is somewhat more of a pain than what is offered with the Veritas. Given that a new Veritas is not significantly different than what a good worker Stanley is going for, I erred on the side of ease. My opinion only, of course.

If everything is done correctly, the shelf should slip right in. Luckily that was the case here.

Well, after much too long a hiatus, I am finally posting the finished pictures of the bathroom renovation. I should say almost finished as Heidi is still looking for the perfect grey towel set to go with the room. All the important stuff is in place though so I feel confident sharing the pictures.

One thing to note is that unlike the earlier photos that were taken with my phone, these pictures were taken by a bonafide photographer as a result of an article that is being published in the our contractors magazine.

People interested in seeing the full renovation process as tracked in this blog should start here.

The Before…

After the Renovation…

The room is bright – very bright – and clean looking but still in keeping with the an aesthetic that is appropriate to an 1886 Victorian home. It has quite clean lines but still some more fanciful accents such as the towel hooks that are placed in various strategic positions around the room.

I’d like to say that I have a favorite thing about the finished renovation but, in truth, there are many.

Fixtures

The fixtures are a mixture of Grohe and Sign of the Crab. Although they are from different manufacturers, the styles and the chrome finishes are extremely compatible. I’m not sure that you’d be able to tell they are not from the same suite unless they were sitting right side by side.

Tiling

The Tiling is a combination of 3″x6″ subway on the walls and 1″ hexagonal on the floor. The grout is Mapei Pearl Grey on both the walls and floor. While the floor is all standard tile, the walls incorporate specialty tiles such as chair rail at the top and baseboard at the bottom.

Subway and chair rail in Arctic White by DaltileSubway and baseboard in Arctic White by Daltile1″ white hexagonal tile by Urban Zebra

We used curved edge tiles on edges and corners as metal border edging would not be in keeping with the age of the house.

Vanity

The vanity and the matching mirror are custom builds from Olympia cabinets utilizing traditional line maple doors with “Cigar” stain.

Finally, the counter top is a cultured marble top by Caesarstone. Not real marble but, as a result, will be much lower maintenance given it is being used by 3 soon to be teenage girls.

Lighting

The lighting in the bathroom is handled by fixtures by Seagull Lighting with schoolhouse style shades.

It has been a while since I’ve updated. We took a week to go to a cottage up in the Kawarthas (north of Peterborough Ontario). It is a wonderful area full of lakes, forests, and generally beautiful scenery. The vacation time was much needed but now it’s back to the real world and telling you about the new shower curtain.

In terms of the bathroom, we are up and running now. I finally installed the shower curtain rod and, with the help of the girls, we’ve decided on a curtain to hang on it. The pattern is quite whimsical. It goes well with the room and pays homage to Ralphie and Canada all at the same time.

The toques are a nice touch too!

As for the bar, we decided that, although it is not strictly traditional, curved was the way to go. The extra space that it provides is too much of a benefit to ignore. The bar is a Moen. While very sturdy, it does seem to have a slightly different chrome finish than the other fixtures in the room. Not a big deal and likely something only we notice as we’re looking at everything so critically.

Now all we need to do is put up the extra hooks that we picked up, settle on the towels, and find a suitable waste basket. Who would have thought that finding the accessories would be such a challenge? In any case, for the towels, we have something in the “perfect” shade of grey that we think will work. They match the grout and are just slightly darker than the bath mat in the pictures.

The contractor that did the work for us is sending a professional photographer over to take pictures of the finished product to use in their marketing. The up side is that, in exchange, they have agreed to give us access to the photos as well. I’ll be able to post some professional shots of the room rather than the cell phone photos I’ve been using so far. The shoot is scheduled for next week so stay tuned for the final before and after pictures at that point.

People interested in seeing the full renovation process as tracked in this blog should start here.

The paint went on the window today and it looks pretty good. The semi-gloss sheen does a good job of fitting with the traditional look but in a cleaner way since there is no underlying heavy build-up of paint layers.

There is no question that the work in preparation made the painting very easy. The hardest part of the process was cutting along the wall on the right hand side which was still relatively simple.

The stool is clean and smooth now. The only parts that look at all off are the corners where the window stops come together. You can see a gap there which could be easily filled with some caulking but, since I have to take them off again to refinish the sashes at a later date, I’ll leave them as is for the moment.

Finally, I put the blinds back in place, which is important because it makes the bathroom actually usable for the first time since the renovation began. The girls are thrilled with the new digs. Just a bit of tile work, the shower rod and curtain, and some final accessories before we can call it complete.

Why not buy new windows?

So now that the window is finally complete, some people may be wondering why I would spend this much time working on an “old” window. While there is the aesthetic consideration of having proper wooden double hung windows in a Victorian house, the real reason is as follows.

These are original windows. That means that they have survived, in a functional state, for 130 years and, with some relatively simple work, can reasonably be expected to survive another 100 years. Every part of the window – casing, sashes, and trim – can be repaired or replaced by someone with reasonable wood working skills. The same cannot be said for aluminium or vinyl windows that people, unfortunately, all too often turn to as substitutes. Once a conversion has been made, not only do you impact the visual appeal of the house, but it really becomes cost prohibitive to convert back to proper double hung wooden windows in future.

It is true that working on these windows is a bit of a dying art. Most contractors default to replacements when faced with window challenges. It is a quicker path to a short term improvement in the look of the windows. But even the best of the replacement windows have service lifetimes that are a fraction of the life of a wooden window – and that is only considering the extended lifespan of a restored window. If you include the original 100+ years of service these windows have typically already provided and you dwarf the service life of a replacement even more.

Some books on windows…

On the other hand, it may be difficult to find someone to do the work for you at a price you can afford and you may end up doing it yourself (as is the case with me). Luckily, there are lots of resources available to help out. My favorite so far is “Working Windows – A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows” by Terry Meany. Terry is a font of information and writes in a very enjoyable and, in fact, funny way.

Another good source of info is “Repairing Old and Historic Windows” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. It is full of useful information but much drier and not what I would call an entertaining read. Useful as an adjunct resource but, for the average homeowner, I’d say Terry’s book is the preferred source.

So if you are lucky enough to have some original wood windows in your house, I strongly urge you to consider restoration over replacement when the time comes.

People interested in seeing the full renovation process as tracked in this blog should start here.

Just a quick post here to show a couple of the bathroom accessories that have now gone in. The towel bars and toilet paper holder were actually installed a couple of days ago but I didn’t get around to posting any pictures. The laundry basket we just picked up today but are not 100% sure we are going to hang onto it. Still going to be some additional hooks going up on the wall above the laundry basket.

The accessories so far are all from the Modona Viola series. Not the most expensive stuff but seems to be good quality and really matches well with the light fixtures and such.

Now if we can just find the right shade of grey towels, we’ll be all set.

People interested in seeing the full renovation process as tracked in this blog should start here.

As I predicted in part 1 of this blog entry, completing the stripping of the paint required another 5 or so hours. I finally finished up around 1 AM exhausted but happy to be done.

I had decided to not use stripper for this window and, instead, rely on the radiant heater and scrapers. While this works well, no matter how careful you are, there is still some gouging that occurs.

As a result of this, and the significant existing damage to the window stool, I had to pull out the polyester resin to skin coat the casing and rebuild the edge of the stool.

It also provides a great way to smooth the transition between the existing casing and the pine extension that was added.

Once everything was set, it was just a matter of some sanding to smooth everything out. A bit of caulk at the joints and things are ready for painting. Of course, this was hours of work but, as with most things you do in renovations, the preparation is everything. The level of effort put in at this stage is directly proportional to the ease of painting and the quality of the final outcome.

I know it is hard to see in this picture but everything is wonderfully smooth and the painted results should be amazing. This also gave me a chance to free the window stops (the stick like pieces you can see in the earlier pictures) which will make things much simpler when I get around to reworking the sashes. For the time being though, I’ll leave them as is in the interest of getting the bathroom in working order sooner rather than later. I can always come back to the sashes but until I get the casing done, I can’t get the blinds re-installed.

Tomorrow is paint and everything should come together.

People interested in seeing the full renovation process as tracked in this blog should start here.

As we’re down to the final strokes with the bathroom, it is time to start putting things back together. One of the things that needed to be done was getting the mechanical fan timer replaced with an electronic one.

The electrician was here on Friday to do that. Much cleaner looking and no more ratcheting noise turning it on.

To complete the installation, I checked to make sure that the fan was still behaving as expected but although it was running, there was almost no air being drawn through it. So I popped my head up into the attic space to see if I could figure out what was going on.

There was the duct from the fan, not attached to anything! Now there are two problems:

The duct was not attached to the exhaust vent to the outside.

No air was getting through anyway, likely due to a kink in the duct itself.

So, no alternative but to crawl into the attic about 5 or 6 feet to see if I could figure out what was going on and reconnect the duct. Now while this doesn’t sound like that big a deal, it is when you consider it is the middle of summer heat and there is not much space to work in… and I mean really not much space – only 11 inches at most.

So I put on my coveralls (it is amazingly dirty in the attic of a 130 year old house though the pictures don’t show it) and wriggled my way on my stomach up to the vent area. After only about 15 minutes of fiddling to un-kink the duct and get it re-clamped on the external vent, I was able to work my way back out again. Funny, it was much harder getting out of the space than getting in – go figure.

But the fan was reconnected and now drawing air so all is good. Hopefully I don’t need to climb up there again any time soon!

People interested in seeing the full renovation process as tracked in this blog should start here.